Meet GES Delegate: Ramiro Rodriguez
Organization Name: Bridge
Twitter handle: @millenialbol
Country of Origin: Bolivia
Organization Website: www.elbridges.com
About the Organization: There are millions of startups all over the world, that spend a lot of money, time and creativity making beautiful tech platforms. Meanwhile in developing countries, people struggle looking for these platforms that they don’t know that exist, but that can help them improve their personal and professional lives. Bridge is a platform where any startup has the opportunity to connect more easily and cheaply with potential users in developing countries; and for local people of these countries to become brand evangelists of those products, breaking barriers of language and culture, making international expansion more accessible to startups.
What inspired you to start this organization? Experience from three previous e-commerce ventures in Latin America; By trying to introduce e-commerce to every business in Bolivia and Peru, we found that the people in these countries need a different method to introduce technology in their lives so they can use it on their own good, for personal or professional life, so it can change their communities and countries, creating a better society. We are creating a network of people connected with free / paid internet to help us change their minds and lives by giving them real access to knowledge immerse on technology. “Give Knowledge to Receive Knowledge”
What is the next big step you hope to help your organization reach?Attract big and small startups that want to introduce their products to all Latin America. Want to attract fellow entrepreneurs from GES2016 to join our platform for FREE, and help them expand first to Latin America, and then Africa and Asia.
Expand our network to create the biggest free wifi cloud network in each country where we will operate, making scalable our model for rapid expansion. With these and big data gather from our network we will also help startups all over the world know what are the needs in technology for people in emerging markets. So everybody wins.
What has been your biggest challenges as an entrepreneur? 1) Fighting with the mindset of a country where the don’t see technology as important in their lives, business and country policies. 2) Fighting while lacking resources to grow your ideas to become reality. 3) Finding the human resources qualified to do the work. 4) Pushing past my comfort zone so I won’t let my life pass without making something important for the world.
What advice would you give other emerging entrepreneurs? Never give up, fight against the mindset of friends and family that don’t believe that you can be the next Steve Jobs, Jack Ma, Elon Musk or Richard Branson. YOU CAN DO IT.
Failure is part of your success, always be positive and know that if something didn’t go as planned, it is for a reason because something bigger comes after that.
Dream BIG, take advantage of every minute in your life, read books, blogs, hear audiobooks while you drive, and get all the information that you can from the most successful people and minds of the planet.
